Curriculum

The Mason City Schools Board of Education approves content standards in the core academic areas of math, English, science and social studies based on Ohio’s State Standards. Mason City Schools maintains local control of our instructional guides and sequencing of lessons.

The standards call for students to have a deeper understanding of the subjects they learn so they can use that understanding in everyday life. Teachers encourage your child to think critically about what he or she is learning, be innovative, solve problems and work together with others. These are skills that your son or daughter can use both in and outside school. They also are skills your child will need some day to be successful in college or jobs.

Our standards represent a new generation of standards because they are based on research about student learning. For example:

Research on what the reading skills needed by adults revealed that much of what adults read is technical in nature. Reading standards now help students learn how to not only read and interpret literature, but also how to read for information.

The mathematics standards now balance both fluency--the ability to quickly recall math facts--with conceptual understanding--the ability to use the math concepts to solve problems and to justify solutions.

These standards embed what we have known for a long time--that information changes so rapidly in today’s world that among the most important things we can teach students is the ability to use their minds well. For example, the mathematics standards include mathematical practices that outline the ability to attend to precision, explain thinking processes, and solve problems.